Eos the Lighthearted

by Joan Holub

  Eos followed him, set her beetle jar on the table, and sat down too. She watched him pick up a pen and start adding details to a rough sketch showing the enlarged body of a grasshopper—one that looked a lot like his Melody. Since she was nowhere to be seen, Eos figured Tithonus had left her in his room for now.

  “You could also feed your beetles plants, buds, grains, even dead leaves,” he said as he sketched. “And you won’t need to give them water. They can get all the moisture they need from the food they eat.”

  “Thanks,” said Eos. He passed her one of the posters, and she got to work helping him with all the written parts of his project, including titles, labels, and captions. As they worked, she briefly told him about her experiences at Ephesus and MOA, and the goddessgirls and godboys she’d met. He was wildly excited when she gave him Ares’ autograph. “Awesome! Cleitus and Cephalus will turn as green as . . . as figeater beetles when they see it!”

  Eos wanted to tell him about the mighty godboy of war being afraid of spiders. Only she’d promised Ares she wouldn’t say a word about his phobia to anyone. “Sorry I didn’t get you Zeus’s autograph too,” she said instead. So much had happened while she was in the principal’s office that she’d completely forgotten to ask for it.

  “S’okay,” said Tithonus, all smiles. He traced a finger over Ares’ signature in awe. “I’m happy just to have this one!” As the two of them went on working, Eos recited to herself over and over the immortality spell she’d composed in her head on her flight home. Tithonus was going to be sooo pleased and surprised!

  When he took a break to fetch them some snacks, she made up her mind to perform the spell the moment he came back. He would surely thank her afterward. His excitement over Ares’ autograph would be nothing compared to his excitement over becoming immortal. She couldn’t wait!

  So as soon as Tithonus reentered the dining room, holding a couple of pears, Eos stood to face him. Then she uttered these words:

  “A mortal you’ll no longer be,

  In just two minutes’ time.

  I give you immortality

  Through this spell made of rhyme.”

  As she’d expected, a look of surprise crossed Tithonus’s face. “What did you just do?”

  She grinned big. “I made you immortal. In about two minutes you’ll be a godboy. Which means, like me, you’ll never die. Isn’t that pink?” She waited for him to get excited and thank her. Instead he frowned.

  “What? But I don’t want to be a godboy!” he insisted. “I’m happy being a mortal and doing what I want. Short life or long life, it’s the quality of life that matters.”

  This was hardly the reaction Eos had anticipated. “I thought everyone wished to be immortal!” she said.

  “Why would you think that?” Tithonus scoffed.

  Her eyes widened in astonishment. “But—but—but—” she sputtered. “Once you become a godboy we can be friends forever! Because of my spell, don’t you see?”

  Tithonus shook his head urgently, frowning. “Immortals have big responsibilities, and everyone is always asking them for stuff. Us mortals can choose to do whatever we care about. If you’re really my friend, you’ll stop this spell. Now.”

  Before Eos could react, the pears Tithonus was holding dropped to the floor. Thunk! Thunk! She watched them roll across it as if in slow motion. When she glanced back up, it was just in time to see him shrink smaller . . . and smaller . . . until he was the size of a tiny twig. No, not a twig—a grasshopper! Oh no! With no time to wonder what had gone wrong, she chased after him as he hopped away. Boing!

  “Tithonus, come back!” she yelled as he bounced around the room. “I love you!”

  Huh? “I love you”? she mouthed silently. Why had she said that? Tithonus had told her grasshoppers could hear.

  Her face turned red. “Just in case you heard that, I didn’t mean it,” she called toward him. “I mean, I like you, but I’m not crushing on you or anything like that.”

  Dimly, she recalled Athena saying that it seemed like Eos was starting to love bugs. This was after she’d captured Cleitus and Cephalus, of course. But there was no time to ponder that now. She had to keep grasshopper-Tithonus from getting away!

  He was boinging here and there, hopping from the floor to the couch to a small table, then back down to the floor and into the kitchen. Eos gave chase. Every time he landed on something new, she crept up on him and then reached out with her hands to catch him. But he was too fast for her. Each time, her hands closed on air as he escaped.

  Eventually he hopped up onto a window frame. To her horror she saw that the window was open. “No! Stop! Don’t leave me. Be my bug boyfriend!” Aaagh! What was wrong with her? She did not want a boyfriend right now! Why in the world was she saying stuff like that? But before she could shoo Tithonus away from the window and close it, he hopped outside.

  Eos’s heart plummeted. She couldn’t lose him! He might not be her bug boyfriend, but he was her best friend!

  “Stay right there!” she shouted, hoping against hope that he might understand her and do as she asked. Racing out the door, she ran around to the outside of the house. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw grasshopper-Tithonus clinging to a bush just below the open window. She crept closer, hands reaching.

  Suddenly, Bugs appeared. Meow! Eyeing the grasshopper, Tithonus’s cat crouched to pounce on it.

  “Nooo!” wailed Eos. She flung herself at the surprised fur ball. Meow! Hiss! Startled, the cat shot under the house.

  Boing! Grasshopper-Tithonus hopped away again. Eos’s eyes stayed glued to him as she trailed him across the backyard. “Come back!” she begged. “Remember how you told me grasshoppers usually only live for a couple of months in the wild? Remember spiders, birds, snakes, and rodents? Plus cats? They think grasshoppers are dinner! Trust me, you will not be hoppy, er, happy out here. This backyard spells bad news for you, pal.”

  Oh, why hadn’t her spell worked the way she’d intended? What had she done wrong? And how could she make it right? If only she could reverse the spell and make Tithonus himself again!

  Eventually, grasshopper-Tithonus came to rest on a stalk of grass at the edge of the field behind the house. Eos drew in her breath. This could be her last chance to catch him. If he bounded into that tall grass, it would be bye-bye Bug Boy forever!

  Her heart beat fast and her hands shook as she brought them down around the grasshopper. Slowly . . . slowly . . .

  “Gotcha!” she crowed happily.

  But as she opened her hands a crack to peek at him, Tithonus boinged up between her fingers and hopped away. With a howl of dismay, she plowed through the tall grass after him, calling out to him over and over.

  “Tithonus! Where are you? Please come back!” As she frantically crashed through the field, dozens more grasshoppers sprang up around her. She felt her heart break. He could be any or none of them.

  Eos sank down onto the grass. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she dropped her head forward and sobbed.

  11

  Crossed Spells

  SEVERAL MINUTES PASSED BEFORE EOS realized that something was tickling her cheek. Slowly she raised her head. The tickling stopped. She looked around her. Then, suddenly, a grasshopper hopped onto one of her knees.

  She stared at it. “Tithonus? Is that you?” The grasshopper stared back at her. It looked like the same grasshopper she’d been chasing. And it was clearly male, since it was smaller than she remembered Melody being. Hope rose inside her. She grew even more certain it was the right grasshopper when affection for the little guy surged through her.

  “I think it is you. ’Cause you’re cute as a bug’s ear!” (Another of Tithonus’s bug sayings.) Eos’s heart pounded with joy. But, just to be sure, she said, “If it is you, Tithonus, give me a sign. Wave one of your little antennae or something.” At first the grasshopper remained still, continuing to stare at her. But then, very slowly, it lifted a hind leg and rubbed it against a wing. Chirp!


  She was so happy she could’ve hugged the grasshopper. Only she’d be afraid of crushing him. “I’m so sorry about that spell,” she told him, in case he really could understand her. “I’ll find a way to fix things. I promise!” Until she did, her heart would never feel light again!

  With her palm turned up, she reached out to him. “Hop on. Please,” she begged. “I need to stash you in a safe place until I can figure out what went wrong with the spell I cast to try to make you immortal.”

  Her mind raced. Maybe Zeus had never really had any intention of allowing her to make Tithonus immortal. Had he only agreed as some cruel trick, knowing her spell wouldn’t work? But she dismissed these thoughts as quickly as they had come. Zeus had seemed to hold no hard feelings toward her family. He even played chess with her dad! And hadn’t Zeus warned her that immortality spells were tricky? No, the fault must lie with her spell somehow.

  As she was pondering this, the grasshopper hopped from her knee to the palm of her hand. She gently cupped her other hand over the top of him and then rose to her feet.

  Back at Tithonus’s house, she went straight to his room. A small terrarium sat on his desk. There was dirt in the bottom of it, but Tithonus hadn’t added any plants—or Melody—yet. For now, Melody’s covered jar sat on some bookshelves at the foot of his bed.

  Speaking through the fingers of her cupped hands to grasshopper-Tithonus, Eos asked, “Want to share Melody’s jar for just a little while? Maybe you could chirp-ask her to share some bug—er, insect—secrets.”

  Chirp!

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ ” Eos replied. But then an unexpected pang of jealousy pierced her heart. What if while chirping along together Tithonus and Melody became BFFs, or Melody started crushing on Tithonus? She mentally rolled her eyes at herself for worrying about this. Was she going totally buggy, or what?

  Maybe she could put him in the jar with Cleitus and Cephalus instead, she thought. But she wasn’t sure if that would be a good idea either. Did beetles and grasshoppers get along? “Changed my mind,” she told grasshopper-Tithonus. “I think you need your own place.” So saying, she held her hands over the unfinished terrarium and released him into it. Then she grabbed a good-size dictionary from one of the bookshelves and used it to cover the top of the terrarium. That would keep him from escaping until she could find a way to remove her spell.

  She carried the terrarium back into the living room and set it on the dining room table. Then she took a sheet of papyrus and scribbled a note to Tithonus’s mother, saying that she and he were going to her house and would have dinner over there. She didn’t add that Tithonus was now a grasshopper. Definitely TMI.

  It had taken weeks to regain Tithonus’s mom’s trust so that she would allow Eos and Tithonus to play together again after what had happened with Nefili in second grade. If his mom found out about this, it would likely take years till they were allowed to hang out again. She only had this evening to fix her spell-gone-wrong.

  Leaving the note in an easy-to-notice place on the table, Eos then tidied up. She gathered all the posters, pens, and supplies together and placed them beside her note. She picked up the two pears that had fallen to the floor when Tithonus had transformed into a grasshopper and took them back to the kitchen.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said at last to her three bug boyfriends. Balancing the jar with the beetles on top of the dictionary-covered terrarium with grasshopper-Tithonus, she carefully carried everything outside and over to her house.

  Somehow she managed to make it through her front door and into the courtyard without running into her mom. There she set her stuff down for just a minute so she could pick a few blades of grass from the garden. These she dropped into the terrarium after sliding the dictionary to one side.

  She was standing before her decorated terra-cotta urn, about to twirl in circles to vaporize and zoom herself, the jar, and the terrarium into her room, when something whooshed from the sky into the courtyard. Thump! A winged notescroll dropped to land at her feet. Huh?

  Wondering who it could be from, she briefly set down her bug-load to pick it up. But instead of unrolling it to read then and there, she tucked it under her arm, since she heard her mom coming. After picking up the terrarium and jar again, she twirled herself and them into a pink vapor. Whoosh! Down they all went through the top of the urn.

  Once she became her goddess self again, Eos set everything on the desk in her urn-room. A quick rummage through her pink-painted wardrobe yielded an old knitted scarf she rarely wore. After sliding the dictionary onto her desk, she draped the scarf over the open terrarium and then taped the scarf’s edges to the glass to make it stay in place. Perfect! This woven lid would keep grasshopper-Tithonus inside while also letting in some air.

  That done, Eos grabbed the notescroll, untied the sparkly pink ribbon from around it, and sank down on the edge of her bed to read it. As if the border of pink and red hearts around the note weren’t enough of a clue to the sender’s identity, Aphrodite had also signed her name in a large, loopy script at the bottom of the scroll, dotting the i with a little heart. Eos flicked a glance at the terrarium, and then began reading.

  Dear Eos,

  I am just back from Persephone’s. I wanted to let you know that Ares told me the truth about his fear of spiders and how he asked you to identify an enormous, poisonous-looking spider in his room.

  “Enormous”? “Poisonous-looking”? A giggle escaped Eos. Apparently Ares hadn’t been entirely truthful with Aphrodite. But good for him for admitting his spider phobia! She went on reading:

  He said the two of you got rid of it, so thank you!

  The TWO of them got rid of it? She giggled again.

  I owe you a huge apology. I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought you and Ares were crushing, so I let my jealous temperament get the better of me and summoned a bedbug to bite you. I hope the itching has finally gone away!

  Eos looked up from the note in surprise. So her “silly” idea about Aphrodite being responsible for the bug bite had been right after all. Aphrodite’s rhyming chant had brought forth the bug! Luckily, the bite had stopped itching. She glanced at her arm and saw that the red spot was hardly noticeable now. “No real harm done,” she murmured. She went back to reading the notescroll:

  And I’m also sorry to say that before you went off to the Supernatural Market, I cast a spell on you.

  “Huh?” Eos’s eyes widened in alarm as she read on, learning the exact words of that spell:

  From among the bugs you see,

  You will fall in love with three.

  While this spell is in effect,

  Other spells will redirect.

  These love bugs you must protect!

  Some spell, thought Eos. More like a curse! And what did it mean, exactly? Aphrodite’s note didn’t explain, but it did finish up with some helpful info:

  After you start to crush on a third and final bug, this spell will be complete and your love for bugs will ease. That easing may take several hours, though. I am truly sorry for what I did. I hope you can forgive me.

  Sincerely,

  Aphrodite

  P.S. Thanks for the thank-you note you left on my desk. I really hope we’ll meet again someday.

  By the end of the notescroll, Eos’s thoughts were whirling. Her sudden crush on this bug-boyfriend trio finally made sense. She was so relieved about that that she was already feeling forgiveness toward Aphrodite. At least that goddessgirl had owned up to what she’d done and that it was wrong. Still, the second-to-last line of Aphrodite’s spell remained puzzling. What did it mean that while the love-bug spell was in effect, other spells would “redirect”?

  She began to put her thoughts in order. It was clear that Aphrodite’s spiteful spell had been “in effect” when Eos cast her immortality spell on Tithonus. So her immortality spell must have been “redirected.” But what exactly did that mean?

  “I need a dictionary!” she said out loud.

  She slid
off her bed and went over to her desk. Wiggling his antennae, grasshopper-Tithonus watched her through the glass of his terrarium as she thumbed through the dictionary she’d taken from Tithonus’s room till she came to the Rs.

  “Here it is,” she murmured. “ ‘Redirect’ means to direct something to a new place or purpose. So what if my spell was ‘redirected’ to the new purpose of turning you into my third love bug? Oh no! If Aphrodite’s spell and mine got tangled together, maybe I made you not just a grasshopper, but an immortal grasshopper! Doomed to bugdom forever!”

  Her forehead furrowed as she stared at grasshopper-Tithonus. Crazy as it seemed, that might just be the case! But as to why Tithonus had become a grasshopper instead of some other kind of bug, she had no idea. Maybe the spell had just chosen the bug it sensed Tithonus liked best.

  The problem now was how to redirect the redirect, to change Tithonus back into himself again. She couldn’t just assume that as Aphrodite’s spell “eased” off her, it would also change him back to a boy. In fact, that didn’t seem likely, since her spell had said nothing about changing a boy to a bug to begin with. With a sinking feeling, she realized she had neither the knowledge nor the skill to fix things. She was pretty sure her mom didn’t either.

  Abruptly, she remembered her dad’s spell-casting award out in the courtyard. Hmm. Should she? Left no other choice, she made up her mind at once.

  “I’m going to go visit my dad in the Underworld,” she told grasshopper-Tithonus, who was busy nibbling on one of the blades of grass she’d pulled up for him. “He might be able to teach me a spell to fix things.”

  Grasshopper-Tithonus paused his chewing to study her intently. “I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t risk it,” Eos told him. Then she cooed, “Because the Underworld is not a safe place for the besty-westy widdle love bug ever!”

  Her grasshopper friend cocked his head at her as if to say, You are acting weird, girl! And she knew she was. Aargh! Embarrassed at what she’d just said, Eos told him, “Don’t worry. When Aphrodite’s spell finally wears off, I should go back to being my normal self, I hope.” Meaning she’d no longer adore three bug boys.